Clytemnestra and the Vote of Athena

Abstract

It will not be disputed that the relationship between the sexes was a subject of great interest to Aeschylus. His first extant play turns on the question of marriage, willing or unwilling; and this is true, whether the Danaids were actuated by a passionate celibacy or by a horror of what they considered incest. The loss of the succeeding plays renders the interpretation of the Danaid trilogy speculative. But in the Oresteia, Aeschylus returns to similar themes: marriage, wife and husband, the relative status of men and women. This last issue becomes explicit during the trial of Orestes, when Apollo proclaims the superiority of the male, and Athena endorses his judgement with her vote. This scene, if variously interpreted, has been recognised to be important. Equally it has been recognised that Clytemnestra, for whose murder Orestes was on trial, is herself depicted as an anomaly: a woman with the mind and counsel of a man. The connexion between these two aspects of the trilogy deserves perhaps a further examination. It is first necessary to consider the characterisation of Clytemnestra. Quite apart from the issues raised in the Eumenides, it is doubtful whether the accepted ‘masculinity’ of Clytemnestra has received attention commensurate with the stress which the poet has laid upon it, nor has it been fully considered in relation to the motives of her conduct. Some, indeed, will deprecate the psychological approach to an Aeschylean character. But there are no a priori grounds on which we can decide up to what point the poet's interest in character developed, as develop it admittedly did. Clytemnestra is the test-case, and we must judge by what we find.